"The only important elements in any society
are the artistic and the criminal,
because they alone, by questioning the society's values,
can force it to change."-Samuel R. Delany

RENDERING GELATINOUS WINDMILL OF DICKS

THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BEST NON-EUCLIDIAN SPLATTERJOUST EVER

It seems that the only people who support anarchy are faggots, who want their pathetic immoral lifestyle accepted by the mainstream society. It wont be so they try to create their own.-Oldman34, friend to all children

2. While I think there is relevance to the idea of cultural sensitivity (AKA, don't make fun of Mohammed, especially around Muslims), that doesn't excuse this.

3. America doesn't have to answer for its citizens, but it should stand up for its embassies.

4. I've met Muslims. They were very nice, very careful not to offend me, very hospitable, and hated the activities that drove them from their homelands. (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria.) The only Muslim I've met that expressed distaste in the US was from Pakistan.

5. I attended a Muslim-led convention about how Muslims can clean up their image with the world. First, you must understand that this sort of thing attracts people with strong political feelings, and second you must understand that people from the third world haven't been taught that some of the things their people have done are horrible (like Americans have). However, the one speaker who supported separation of mosque and state in Muslim countries was largely panned by the audience and was cut off by the emcee. Someone from the audience suggested that if Muslims wanted peace, they should publicly denounce terrorist attacks. The same speaker passionately agreed, but the others wouldn't comment.

6. This issue isn't as simple as "Islam is evil", or the simpler "Religion is evil." There are Hindu terrorists, Buddhist terrorists, Atheist terrorists, and Christian terrorists as well. What these countries lack is a check-and-balance for their religion. It's actually similar to Catholicism in the Middle Ages. Ultimately, with Christianity, it was very much misunderstood by its own followers, and the uneducated were being exploited. (Honestly, it's not too different today.) I think this is more like that than "Muslims are evil". It's easy, especially for Americans, to forget how high we live, and that not everyone else has gotten there yet.

Most Americans knew nothing about Innocence of Muslims. That's the film that has set the Muslim world on fire, causing protests in Egypt and Libya that led to the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

The bottom line is that we know very little about "Sam Bacile," the man who says he produced the film and says Sam Bacile is his name. The Wall Street Journal caught up with Bacile before he went into hiding. (Update at 3:34 p.m. ET. Some of the claims made in the Journal interview have come under question. We've updated this post below to reflect that.)

According to the Journal, Bacile raised "$5 million from 100 Jewish donors" and he produced the film using 60 actors and 45 crew members.

Bacile told the Journal that he made the film to expose "Islam as a hateful religion."

"Islam is a cancer," he told the paper. "The movie is a political movie. It's not a religious movie."

In another interview, Bacile told The Associated Press that he was a real estate developer and an Israeli Jew, but Israeli authorities told the wire service they have no records of him being a citizen.

NPR's library did not turn up any footprint for Bacile. It found no property, phone, licenses or court records. And Bacile had not made news until today.

Bacile repeated what he told the Journal to the AP.

"The U.S. lost a lot of money and a lot of people in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're fighting with ideas," he said. The AP story also points out that Bacile may have been warned this film would be controversial and perhaps even incite violence.

"You're going to be the next Theo van Gogh," Steve Klein, a consultant on the film, told the AP he told Bacile. Van Gogh, the AP explains, was the Dutch filmmaker who was killed after making a movie perceived as insulting to Islam.

Innocence of Muslims is a feature-length film. In early July, "Sam Bacile" posted a 14-minute trailer of the film on YouTube. (Be warned, many have found the video offensive.) The preview portrays Muhammad as an imbecile and as a false prophet.

For Muslims it's offensive to simply depict the prophet. To insult him is a whole other story.

Bacile told the AP that he was sorry for the death of Ambassador Stevens, but he blamed his death on the security system.

"I feel the security system [at the embassies] is no good," Bacile said. "America should do something to change it."

When clips of the film were shown on an Egyptian TV program, they were described as being the work of Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who has burned Qurans. Jones, The Wall Street Journal reports, was merely promoting the film, saying he would screen the trailer at his church on Sept. 11.

"The film is not intended to insult the Muslim community, but it is intended to reveal truths about Muhammad that are possibly not widely known," Jones said in a statement obtained by The Orlando Sentinel.

Update at 7:27 p.m. ET. Calif. Coptic Christian Confirms Role:

Using the cellphone number they talked to "Sam Bacile," The Associated Press tracked down a man named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, who lived at the address that aligned with cellphone records.

Nakoula denied that he directed the film but admitted that he was the manager for the production company. He also told the AP that he was a Coptic Christian.

The AP notes that Nakoula has a criminal record: He pleaded no contest in 2010 to federal bank fraud charges and served 21 months in federal prison.

The AP adds:

"Nakoula denied he had posed as Bacile. During a conversation outside his home, he offered his driver's license to show his identity but kept his thumb over his middle name, Basseley. Records checks by the AP subsequently found the name 'Basseley' and other connections to the Bacile persona.
"The AP located Bacile after obtaining his cell phone number from Morris Sadek, a conservative Coptic Christian in the U.S. who had promoted the anti-Muslim film in recent days on his website. Egypt's Christian Coptic population has long decried what they describe as a history of discrimination and occasional violence from the country's Arab majority."

Update at 6:18 p.m. ET. Actress Says This Wasn't What She Signed Up For:

She said the film makes her "sick" because she was never told this was the movie she was making. In fact, the lines she delivered were dubbed over to insert the offensive and blasphemous lines.

Gawker reports:

"The script she was given was titled simply Desert Warriors.
" 'It was going to be a film based on how things were 2,000 years ago,' Garcia said. 'It wasn't based on anything to do with religion, it was just on how things were run in Egypt. There wasn't anything about Muhammed or Muslims or anything.'
"In the script and during the shooting, nothing indicated the controversial nature of the final product. Muhammed wasn't even called Muhammed; he was "Master George," Garcia said. The words Muhammed were dubbed over in post-production, as were essentially all other offensive references to Islam and Muhammed."

"I don't know that much about him. I met him, I spoke to him for an hour. He's not Israeli, no," Klein told Goldberg. "I can tell you this for sure, the state of Israel is not involved, Terry Jones [the radical Christian Quran-burning pastor] is not involved. His name is a pseudonym. All these Middle Eastern folks I work with have pseudonyms. I doubt he's Jewish. I would suspect this is a disinformation campaign."

"In 1977, he founded Courageous Christians United, which now conducts 'respectful confrontations' outside of abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques," the SPLC reports. "Klein also has ties to the Minuteman movement. In 2007, he sued the city of San Clemente for ordering him to stop leafleting cars with pamphlets opposing illegal immigration."

So, we repeat again, with this story it's better to remain highly skeptical.

"Though Bacile claims he spent $5 million on the movie — a figure that would put the film on par with the Toronto festival entrant Julianne Moore-starrer What Maisie Knew — the 13 minutes of footage available online look unprofessional. Furthermore, Bacile has virtually no footprint in the Hollywood community. The writer-director-producer has no agent listed on IMDBPro and no credits on any film or TV production."

What's safe to say now is that we should look at those claims with a great deal of skepticism.

The use of the actors under false pretense is wrong. Sucks to get involved in that. Of course neither the unwittingly involved actors or the intentionally involved director should be be victims of violence.

2. While I think there is relevance to the idea of cultural sensitivity (AKA, don't make fun of Mohammed, especially around Muslims), that doesn't excuse this.

3. America doesn't have to answer for its citizens, but it should stand up for its embassies.

4. I've met Muslims. They were very nice, very careful not to offend me, very hospitable, and hated the activities that drove them from their homelands. (Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria.) The only Muslim I've met that expressed distaste in the US was from Pakistan.

5. I attended a Muslim-led convention about how Muslims can clean up their image with the world. First, you must understand that this sort of thing attracts people with strong political feelings, and second you must understand that people from the third world haven't been taught that some of the things their people have done are horrible (like Americans have). However, the one speaker who supported separation of mosque and state in Muslim countries was largely panned by the audience and was cut off by the emcee. Someone from the audience suggested that if Muslims wanted peace, they should publicly denounce terrorist attacks. The same speaker passionately agreed, but the others wouldn't comment.

6. This issue isn't as simple as "Islam is evil", or the simpler "Religion is evil." There are Hindu terrorists, Buddhist terrorists, Atheist terrorists, and Christian terrorists as well. What these countries lack is a check-and-balance for their religion. It's actually similar to Catholicism in the Middle Ages. Ultimately, with Christianity, it was very much misunderstood by its own followers, and the uneducated were being exploited. (Honestly, it's not too different today.) I think this is more like that than "Muslims are evil". It's easy, especially for Americans, to forget how high we live, and that not everyone else has gotten there yet.

TLDR: The world's messed up.

You are a patronizing douche. I am not an Arab and i take offense. You really think they can't tell between right or wrong???? they can!!! their rights and wrongs are from the Qur'an and it says it's good to kill infidels in the name of god! and if you blasphemy you should die! They look down at you and your cloture thinking we are all depraved rotten subhumans. Don't think they don't know better, cause they think they do.

Oh and why do they claim it is because of the insults against Muhammad? also in Yemen Egypt etc. Why try and find excuses for their murderous actions? When they kill gays you go look for excuses or do you denounce their actions?